Tuesday, April 8, 2014

LOEB: If history repeats itself I want a dinosaur

This Week: "Hey, Isn't that..."

During my senior year of high school, the local museum in our small town was visited by a traveling exhibit of the famous "Sue" T-Rex Skeleton. During its time there we were also graced with a guest lecturer who had some experience with dinosaurs; James Gurney, author and illustrator of the award winning "Dinotopia" book series.

The fellow on the left in the hat

In these pre-Wikipedia days, this was useful for learning key information about his career like his background paintings on the cult film "Fire and Ice", his work for National Geographic, and how in China, the Dinotopia books are printed as "Happy Magic Dinosaur Kingdom". At the end he was signing books were I told him I was an aspiring artist. Upon hearing this, he wrote "To Erik, Fellow Artist".

Well there were some TV properties including a 2002 mini series that won an Emmy for special effects which lead into a short run TV series on ABC. Despite the technical limitations of television at the time Mr. Gurney said he was more interested in seeing Dinotopia developed for television rather than movies because he felt that a feature film might have too much violence for kids to be able see it.

The mini series is alright in its own respects but it deviates from the source material by necessity since the books are more akin to travelogue than a story.

This is such a freakin cool story! I love that you got to see him twice. I also like what he signed for you. That is just really awesome. Now I've heard of Dinotopia, but I don't think I ever really read anything about it before. I'll have to check it out!

Hope you are doing well! I see you have been busy with posting some new things and I am loving every minute of it! Check your FB too, I am going to be sending you a message shortly.

I was planned on putting up some pictures of the books themselves, but I was looking at my stats and noticed that my most viewed posts are the ones with hi res pictures from artists I admire. So it seems people were coming in from Google for these illustrations rather than the text I was writing around them.

Sorry I that meant I couldn't bring you up to speed, but do check out the books. They are children's picture books after all so it should be a pretty quick and easy read.

That's cool. I loved that book as a kid. We had to pick a book that we would memorize in a Fahrenheit 451 scenario in Middle School and I had to write a couple paragraphs about why I'd memorize Dinotopian. The goofy thing about that is that I love the art in the book far more than the story.

Thats a neat project. Rereading the book, and its clear that the art is the star of the show. It is written in the style of a sketch travel journal which was popular at the start of the twentieth century as it was the only way to see pictures of other parts of the world.

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Part of the Michigan Comics Collective

About Me

Yes. I can illustrate for you.
I'm an illustrator, a storyteller and someone who can help you achieve your goals through art. I work both traditionally and digitally.
I specialize in pop culture inspired art often with a humorous twist.
You can view my portfolio and learn how to work with me at erikjohnsonillustrator.com